We thus reach the acute stage of the problem of the One and the Many.
The One is here the predicate, the subject is the Many. The solution of
the difficulty is the task of the copula, and we shall recur to the
theme in due time. It may be well, however, at this point to draw
attention to the fact that the One is not always identical with the
predicate, nor the Many with the subject. In the rhythmic movement of
erecting and verifying hypotheses the interest shifts and what was but
now the predicate, by taking the place of the premises, comes to be
regarded as the given from which the particular is to be derived or
deduced. There is thus likewise a shift in the positions of existence
and meaning. The subject, or the world, was first assumed as the given
means with which to construct the predicate, its meaning; once the
hypothesis has been erected, the direction of interest shifts back to
the beginning, and in the process of verification or deduction the
quondam predicate, now the premises, becomes the given, and the task set
for thought is the derivation of fact. For the moment, or until the
return to the world is accomplished, the One is the only real, the
Manifold remains mere appearance.
The second form in which the sense of the homogeneity of the world
embodies itself is not, like the first, static, but is altogether
dynamic. That which makes the whole world kin is neither the presence
nor the absence of a quality, but a principle. The law thus revealed is,
therefore, not a matter of the predicate, but is the copula itself.
Hence we must defer a fuller consideration of it for the present.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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